Blanket
by TeaRoses
Summary: Silent Hill 4: A short fic about Frank Sunderland and what he found in Apartment 302.


This was originally written for the LiveJournal community 31days, for the prompt "the simple and loving heart of childhood." 

The game Silent Hill 4 and its characters belong to Konami, not to me.

Blanket

Apartment 302 was a filthy mess. What could you expect from people who abandoned their own baby? They had left behind everything else, too -- rotten food, broken dishes, torn old clothing. And it looked like they had never cleaned the place, either. The only thing Frank Sunderland didn't see was any item worth money or anything that would give a hint as to where they had gone. The police would never find them to question them about the newborn, and Frank would never get them to pay the cleaning fee. Their deposit was never going to cover this mess.

Frank sighed. Finding that poor abandoned creature with his umbilical cord still attached had been so bizarre that this should be nothing in comparison. But he still had to deal with it, and he was angry. Slowly, he began putting some of the trash into garbage bags. He would have to bring in a cleaning service to do something about the kitchen, and there was no way he would ever get the blood out of the carpet. Even in his anger he couldn't help shuddering thinking of the woman giving birth lying on the floor.

He found the box on top of a shelf in the bedroom closet. It was flat and white like a department store clothing box. When he opened it, he found a yellow and white crocheted blanket, beautifully made with even loops. Frank's own son had slept under something like this when he was an infant. There was a note attached to it.

"Please give this to my baby."

What the hell? Why would anyone make a blanket for a baby when she didn't want it, didn't even care if it lived or died? Or maybe she had bought the blanket, though it was obviously hand-made. But that still didn't explain why she had bothered. And now Frank had to think of some way to give it to the baby. Someday he would want it. Wouldn't it be better to know that his mother had thought of him, if only for a while, than to think that the only favor she had done him was to leave him alive?

Last week Frank had called St. Jerome's Hospital where the ambulance had taken the baby, just to check if it had survived. They didn't want to give him any information, but eventually told him that the boy was alive and had been sent to the Wish House orphanage in Silent Hill. That only made sense; the place was famous for taking in abandoned children in the area around Ashfield.

The first address he found for Wish House was a post office box, but he knew if he promised himself to mail the blanket he'd only forget. Finally he located a street address and decided to drive out there that afternoon. It wasn't far and would be a break from cleaning that disgusting apartment.

Driving over, he kept thinking about that baby. It had been crying, and it was so small and covered with blood. Frank had thought of going out, buying diapers and bottles, but he had quickly realized that he needed to call an ambulance instead. It wasn't as if he could keep the poor thing, as helpless and sweet as it seemed when he picked it up, as pathetic as it had looked lying on the carpet screaming for its mother. In fact he had told himself not to think about it, that the whole business was over as far as he was concerned, even though he had cut the cord with a clean knife and stuffed it in his drawer as if it were a souvenir.

It wasn't easy to find Wish House; the orphanage was outside the town in the woods. When he finally got there he saw an old house with peeling paint and a battered playground outside. The place looked bleak, not nice and friendly like it had in the fundraising pictures everyone saw. He stood for a moment outside the fence. A few children were playing, but they looked thin and undernourished, and mostly stood alone. When they saw him they looked frightened and a couple of them ran to hide behind the house. That bothered him, but then he reflected that perhaps they hadn't been here long, that their original parents had abused them and now they were understandably afraid of strangers.

Frank knocked on the door. A woman with dark hair and a severe face opened it half-way.

"What do you want?"

"I'm Frank Sunderland. I'm the one who found that abandoned baby in the apartment in Ashfield."

"Walter Sullivan," said the woman, nodding. "What do you want? He's with us now. We don't need your help."

This woman was not at all what the expected to find taking care of vulnerable young children at an orphanage. Frank reflected to himself that the kids probably had some nasty nicknames for her.

"It's just this. It's a blanket. I found it in the apartment while I was cleaning it."

"We have plenty of blankets here, Mr. Sunderland. If you want to make a donation--"

"The mother meant for him to have it. There's a note."

"Walter Sullivan has no mother," said the woman.

Frank sighed. "Well, she gave birth to him, right there in my apartment, and she left this for him. All I want is for him to be able to keep it."

The woman grabbed the box. "Very well. I'll see that he gets it."

"Is he... is he doing all right?" asked Frank hesitantly.

"You can't see him."

"He wouldn't know me anyway; he's just an infant. I just want to know if he's all right. Are you trying to find his parents? Will he be adopted by a family?"

"We'll be raising him here in the Wish House family, Mr. Sunderland. And he'll be fine."

The woman closed the door and Frank walked away. One of the children stared at him with sad eyes and he wondered if letting these people take that poor baby was the right thing after all. Everyone spoke so well of Wish House but now Frank wondered why. Especially since he was certain that the woman, whoever she was, had been lying. Maybe Walter Sullivan was all right, but Frank knew the child he found would never sleep under that blanket, and would never know that his mother left him a thing.


End file.
